A short and sweet BotW post this week. I didn’t finish as much as I wanted last week – and some of what I finished was never going to be a contender for a slot here. But the Cornish Coast Murder perked me up at the end of the week and snuck in under the wire.
The Cornish Coast Murder sees an armchair murder mystery novel enthusiast with an actual real life crime on his doorstep. Reverend Dodd and his friend Dr Pendrill meet up once a week to talk detective fiction and open their latest delivery from the library. But one night during their chat, a panicked phone call comes through from a neighbour, Ruth Tregarthen saying that her uncle has been shot. There are no obvious clues and the police seem baffled so Reverend Dodd starts to help investigate the crime using his knowledge of crime fiction to help him.
This is the first in the Inspector Bigswell series – and the second John Bude* that I’ve read. This is a nice fun read – but it’s not as complex or ingenious as some of the authors that Reverend Dodd reads with his friend. I had a fair idea where it was going – and although I wasn’t entirely right it meant that I wasn’t as entirely gripped as I am with some similar books. But this was Bude’s fist book so perhaps that’s not surprising that it’s not perfect – and certainly the other Bude I’ve read (the Sussex Downs Murder)* was more complex – although the solution to that is rather cliched now. Anyway – it’s an enjoyable read and a if you’ve got an interest in Golden Age crime novels it’s well worth a look.
My copy of the Cornish Coast Murder was the rather pretty British Library Crime Classics edition – so you may well be able to find it in your local bookshop. I’ve certainly seen them in various Waterstones. The Kindle edition is free if you’re in Kindle Unlimited or it’s £2.99 to buy.
Happy Reading!
*Editors note: I realised after I posted this that Sussex Downs was also a BotW – back in June last year. I am nothing if not predictable!
A short but sweet post today for BotW because it’s super busy here. I also didn’t read as much as usual during the week, so I had trouble picking a book to write about before I headed off for my weekend of bookwormery at the book conference. Anyway, the best of what I read before the weekend was Mary Stewart’s Thornyhold.
Thornyhold tells the story of Gilly, who has a mysterious godmother figure who shows up at intervals throughout her childhood and who then leaves her a house, just as Gilly is most at need of it. Thornyhold is deep in the woods, isolated and has the potential to be really creepy. But Gilly never really feels scared by the house – although she’s not really sure about some of the people associated with the house. But there’s something magical about Thornyhold – possibly literally – and soon she’s caught up in trying to figure out exactly what her aunt wanted her to do with her legacy.
This was my first Mary Stewart book and i understand that it’s not 100 percent typical of what she does. I spent a lot of the book waiting for some big gothic tragedy to happen – because that’s what it felt like was bound to happen. But actually it’s much more straightforward than I was expecting. It is quite gothic – but ultimately it’s more of a romantic story and after the initial tragedies in Gilly’s stories, it’s working it’s way towards a happier resolution for her than I was expecting. I don’t know why I was expecting disaster and it all to end badly, except that there’s a lot of tension in the writing and I’ve read so many books where things like this end badly, I couldn’t quite let myself hope that it was all going to be ok! There is actual romance in this, and it comes in quite late on and doesn’t get quite as much time spent on it as I would have liked, but it was still fairly satisfyinging in the end. As always with this sort of book I wanted a bit more of the “after” of all the resolutions – even another couple of pages would have helped, but I can’t complain too much.
I’m fairly sure I’ll be reading some more Mary Stewart – but given the state of the to-read bookshelf at the moment, it may be some time. This one had been sitting waiting for me for a while and the pile has only grown since I bought it! My copy of Thornyhold was a secondhand paperback, but there’s a shiny new paperback edition should you feel so inclined and it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo for £1.99 at time of writing.
It’s so hot outside, that all I want to do at the moment is lie in the shade and drink a cold drink and read books. So because the UK is in the midst of a heatwave – and there are lots of people who are on holiday at the moment and will be doing exactly the same thing but by a beach somewhere glamourous, this week’s BotW that is perfect for reading while doing exactly that: Talia Hibbert’s The Princess Trap.
This is a contemporary romance with a prince in disguise and a fake relationship. If you read Alyssa Cole’s A Princess in Theory earlier in the year and were looking for something else that scratches that itch, this may be the book for you. It is a bit steamier than I remember that being – and there’s a couple of elements to the relationship here that are a bit different – but if you want another twist on the royalty trope – this time with a black British woman (who is not a stick insect) as the heroine, then go pick this up – what have you got to use.
Ruben is the younger brother of the king of a Scandinavian island, who is trying to recover his life from a sex-tape scandal. Cherry works in HR at a school in London and is trying to help her family put her sister through college in the US. He’s there incognito to have a look at whether the school’s ideas would fit into his educational programme when he spots her. But when they’re spotted by the paparazzi, he tells them she’s his fiancée and asks her to keep up the pretence to get his family off his back. What’s in it for her? A big stack of cash that would really help with her sister’s tuition bills. Cherry likes him and the money would be handy. But she doesn’t really understand what being a royal fiancée entails and she doesn’t know about his scandal. And then there’s his family and his past, which has got some serious issues in it. I should add a trigger warning here – for abuse in the back story and in flashbacks – so avoid this if these are problematic for you, but I didn’t find it too upsetting.
This was my first Talia Hibbert and I really loved it. I heard her interviewed on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books podcast a few weeks back and made a note to read some of her books. And I’m so glad that I picked this one up. It’s got a great story, a fantastic heroine who knows exactly what she wants and isn’t going to let anyone (even a prince) push her about, a hero who has his issues, but also a load of privilege and luckily has a bunch of people around him who call hin out when he’s being an idiot. And it has all the diversity and representation you could want in a book. I’m not going to run through the list here – because that makes it feel like a box ticking exercise and that is the opposite of what this is. This is society as I see it everyday in a book – not a boring homogenous version of life – and it’s wonderful. I’ll definitely be reading some more of Hibbert’s books.
This is available on Kindle version – I picked it up for free last week – but it’s £2.99 at time of writing. It is however included in the Kindle Unlimited programme – so if you’re in that it’s just a guilt free click away. In fact quite a lot of Hibbert’s books are in Kindle Unlimited so if this trope doesn’t work for you – or you’re worried about that trigger warning, then there maybe another one for you in the mix somewhere. From that interview that I mentioned earlier, Hibbert’s thing is definitely strong heroines and diverse casts of characters who challenge sterotypes in romantic fiction.
With all the holiday excitement over and my reading pretty much back to normal, we’re in the murder mystery end of my reading for this week’s BotW, Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials by Ovidia Yu. I picked this up on a whim from a charity bookshop in Westminster on my lunch break from my local elections results shift back in May and I’m really glad I did. In fact that bookshop trip provided a few books from authors that I hadn’t heard of before that really, really appealed to me. I think it’s location meant that it had a different selection of books from a lot of the charity shops I’ve been in recently. And I’m always after new voices and new ideas for reading material!
When her client and her sick son are found dead in his bedroom during a garden party that she is catering, Aunty Lee finds her food under suspicion. The intrepid widow starts to investigate, but when her restaurant and kitchen are shut down because of the influential connections of the victims, she redoubled her efforts. Meanwhile the police officer in charge of the investigation finds his efforts hampered by an officious and over zealous junior officer as well as political pressure to blame the food and let it go. What really killed Mabel Sung and her son Leonard, how does a dead Chinese man fit in and who is it that is so desperate to cover everything up?
I’ve been describing this to people as Crazy Rich Asians meets cozy crime. It’s got some of the elements of the super rich privileged lifestyle that you find in Kevin Kwan’s novel but also the amateur detective trying to save their business element that I love in so many small town cozy crime novels. Aunty Lee is a great character – an older widow who talks to photos of her dead husband that are on the wall in every room of her house and restaurant, she has an annoying stepson and daughter-in-law and a band of loyal friends. This is the second in the series and I still feel like I’m missing a bit of Aunty Lee’s back story, but I enjoyed this so much I didn’t care!
I hadn’t come across Ovidia Yu before – my copy of this is also clearly a US edition – but having read this I’m really keen to read more from her. This is a well-written page turner with a clever plot and a brilliant cast of characters. I also loved the setting – Singaporean life and culture is brought to life so vividly in this – with the mix of cultures, backgrounds and languages with a lot of what felt like really good insider detail.
Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials is available on Kindle and Kobo and in paperback – although I suspect it’s going to be an order it in to the bookstore sort of book rather than a find-it-on-the-shelf one. I’ll definitely be looking for more from Ovidia Yu – there are three other Aunty Lee books and she’s written other books that I like the look of as well, because of course what I need is more books on the to-read shelf…
Another change of direction for this week’s BotW pick. I read a lot last week, and a lot of it was good, but Judge Walden: Back in Session seemed like a fairly obvious pick – even if it is the second in a series, and not just because it is out on Thursday. And I know I keep saying it, but the summer reading reccs post is coming up, so more of last week’s books may yet get a mention!
Back in Session is the second book about Charlie Walden, resident judge (that means he’s in charge) at Berdmonsey Crown Court. His main aim in life is just to get on with his job – trying criminals – without attracting the attention of either the press or, even worse, the Civil Servants. He calls them the Grey Smoothies and is constantly on the watch for their latest targets or cost cutting idea. He also has to manage his three fellow judges – who all have different ideas about the law and how it should be applied and aren’t afraid of expressing them. Charlie’s wife – a vicar – is also a regular character who offers insight and support depending on what’s going on at court. The book is broken down into a series of cases, each covering one trial but which either have some relevance to wider life at the court or which have something happening in the background at the same time. Each case is about novella length and as you get to the end of the book all the threads that have been bubbling along build to a satisfying conclusion.
I bought the first book in this series after reading the first case in it (which is free on Kindle) and both the books really, really worked for me. The characters are interesting, the setting is fun and different and it’s all knitted together so well. The author is a former resident judge himself and so presumably knows exactly what he’s talking about. As a journalist in my “proper” job, I’ve done my share of court reporting over the years, and all the court scenes in this really worked for me – except with all the boring stuff taken out! Because it’s broken down into cases, I think it would make a great book to read on the train or on a plane – it’s easy to pick up and put down without losing the sense of what’s going on.
Back in Session does build on the framework from the first book – so I definitely suggest reading Walden of Berdmonsey first – but if you don’t, I don’t think it would be the end of the world. My copy of the new book came from NetGalley, but I bought book one on a Kindle deal, so it might be worth adding that to your watchlist as the price may drop when book two comes out. If you want to get hold of a copy for your very own, Back in Session is available to pre-order in Kindle, Kobo or in paperback from Amazon, your friendly local bookshop or Big Green Books. The first book is also in all the same places (Kindle/Kobo/Amazon paperback/Big Green Bookshop) or if you want a free taster, you can try Walden’s First Case, but I could only find that on Kindle. I’m hoping we haven’t heard the last of the Judges of Berdmonsey Crown Court.
In a change from recent form, it’s not a crime pick this week – but perhaps the pick won’t be a surprise to regular readers with an eye on the new release lists. I’m a long-time Trisha Ashley fan, and she has a new novel out this week and I was lucky enough to have an advance copy sent to me by the publishers. If you follow me on Litsy (I’m @Verity there) you’ll have seen me get excited about this when it arrived and it’s taken a lot of willpower to save it until close to release to read it.
The House of Hope and Dreams follows Carey and Angel, who’ve been friends since art college, although life has taken them in slightly different directions. At the start of the novel TV interior designer Carey is in hospital recovering after nearly losing his leg after being knocked off his bike. He’s been dumped from his show, but when a lawyer arrives to tell him that he’s inherited a minor historic house in Lancashire it looks like he may have a new project. Angel’s life had been turned upside down after the death of her partner – who she’d been working with at his stained glass company for more than a decade. She’s lost her job and her home, but luckily her skills are exactly what her old friend is looking for and there’s space for her at Mossby. Soon Angel is setting up a workshop so she can repair Mossby’s unique windows and Carey is working on a new TV series about the renovation of the house and the secrets that it’s hiding. But how long will it take the two of them to work out that there’s more to their relationship than just friendship?
If you were to ask me about my book catnip, high on the list are old houses, competency porn (aka heroines who are really good at what they do) and friends to lovers stories, so straight away this ticks a lot of boxes for me. And this is back in a corner of Lancashire that has a lot of old friends from previous visits to TrishaWorld – Carey’s house is just up the road from Middlemoss so you get a few glimpses at old friends from novels gone by. This is a little sadder in the backstory and less funny than some of her other books, but I relaxed happily back into it and although I always had a very fair idea where everything was going, it was an enjoyable ride to get there.
If you’re very familiar with Ashley’s books (and I speak as someone who has read everything she’s published except her historical novel) then this may feel a bit like a Greatest Hits album – which I found a bit of a mixed blessing. But I think there’s a lot here for newer fans to love, especially people who’ve only started reading her in her last couple of novels and haven’t come across this part of her imaginary corner of England before. And they’ll be able to go away and discover more of it with the side characters in this, which in turn may lead them to my absolute favour of Ashley’s novels, A Winter’s Tale (another story about an old house with secrets) .
The House of Hopes and Dreams is out on Thursday – you should be able to find it in supermarkets (that’s where I picked up my first Trisha) and bookshops, or if you can’t wait here are the preorder links for Amazon and Kindle. I’ll be buying one too – because my preview copy doesn’t have the recipes in the back!
if you want to go and read some of my previous ramblings about Trisha’s world, try here, here and here.
So this week’s BotW is the latest in my quest to find more historical crime series. As regular readers are well aware by now, if there are two things that I love, in book terms, it’s murder mysteries and the inter-war period. Witness my previous ravings about my beloved Lord Peter (sidenote, I’ve just treated myself to the Radio play collections from Audible and it is glorious), Daisy Dalrymple, Phryne Fisher et al. So during my Kindle store virtual rummagings I often pick up books that I think might scratch that itch. This was one such purchase.
A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia deals with the murder of one Ticky Maltravers. And never was someone more aptly named. Ticky is a tick of the highest order. For although it appears that he’s really popular, underneath the surface something rather unpleasant is going on. When Ticky drops dead after a meal to celebrate his birthday, newspaper man Freddie Pilkington-Soames finds himself involved – on two fronts. Firstly his mother was in the taxi with Ticky when he died, and secondly Freddie is chasing the story to try and hold on to his job.
Freddie is Bertie Wooster on the outside, but much, much cleverer on the inside – a bit like Albert Campion in some ways, who is described on occasion as having a foolish face which leads people to underestimate him. And that makes for an engaging read. Freddie is straddling the two worlds in the book – the high society trying to hold on to their secretes and the forces of justice and the press. And because of his job, Freddie has a legitimate reason to be involved in the case which, as I’ve mentioned before, is often a stumbling block for the crime solver in series like this.
I believe Freddie was a side character – a comic one – in Benson’s other series, but although I’ve read one book of hers, it was a while ago and the details have faded. But based on how much I enjoyed this, I’ve clearly been missing out. I’ve added the rest of the Freddie books to my Kindle watchlist, and the other series – the Angela Marchmont mysteries – too. I was really impressed with how good this was – and for a while I thought it might be one of the forgotten Golden Age books that I’ve picked up on offer. I put that down to the fact that it comes across as a mix of PG Wodehouse and one of the Queens of Crime – witty but with a solid, slightly grubby murder.
My copy was on Kindle (I even paid for it) – and it’s still only 99p at time of writing this – but it’s also available on Kobo or as a paperback, although I suspect that will be a special order job rather than one you can pick up in the bookshop.
I was still suffering from the after effects of my virus from hell last week, so not a lot of reading got done – as you can see from yesterday’s Week in Books post. But luckily one of the books that I did finish hit the spot. My brain is still a bit fried and over tired, so apologies that this post is going to be shorter than usual.
Duke of Pleasure is the eleventh book in the Maiden Lane series – but only the second one of them that I’ve read. The Maiden Lane series – or at least the ones of them that I’ve read – are set in the early to mid eighteenth century (around the 1730s) and have characters from the ton mixing it with the less fortunate in the East End and the Stews. Duke of Pleasure sees Hugh Fitzroy, the titular Duke (of Kyle) on an errand from the government to break up a secret society known as the Lords of Chaos. When Hugh is ambushed in an alley, he’s helped out of trouble by the legendary Ghost of St Giles – who turns out to be a woman. Alf has survived on the streets by disguising herself as a man. During the day she’s a street urchin, dealing in information, but by night she’s a masked vigilante flitting across the rooftops. When Hugh hires Alf to work for him, how long with Alf be able to maintain his disguise as his two worlds collide?
Regular readers to my posts about romance will be aware that one of my favourite historical romance tropes is people in diguise. Usually it’s women dressed as men – Twelfth Night, Heyer’s These Old Shades – ocassionally it’s the other way around – Heyer’s Maskeraders – but really, I’ll read anything about people in disguise. And this scratched that itch nicely for me. It’s a bit overblown at times – a bastard son of the king working as a spy can have that effect – but I just couldn’t put it down. Alf is a great character and I liked Hugh’s complicated family and backstory. It all wrapped up very quickly in the end, but the set up for the next book was intriguing. I got this one from the library – I can only hope they’ve got a few more!
You should be able to get hold of this from your preferred purveyor of romantic fiction – Amazon have it in Kindle and paperback – but I suspect you may have to have a rummage for it in the bookshops.
As we get closer and closer to Christmas, it’s getting harder and harder for me to pick BotW’s that don’t infringe on my Christmas reading suggestion posts. Hence why this week’s choice is Rumer Godden’s China Court – a book which I still can’t make up my mind what I think about it, several days after I finished reading it.
Another train based photo…
China Court is the story of the homecoming of Tracy, who arrives back at her grandmother’s house the day after her grandma has died. Brought up in America, Tracy spent the favourite part of her childhood living at China Court and is worried about what her grandmother’s death may mean for the old house. But as well as being about Tracy’s return, the book is also the story of family who have lived in the house over the years and their trials and tribulations.
Regular readers will know that I love a good family saga, and that I love time slip novels, and this is a bit of both – a huge cast of characters and two timelines, one present, one past – although the past one moves through time rather than being the story of just one person in the past. And although it took me a while to get into it (as evidenced by the length of time it spent in the Week in Books posts), once I had got into it, I didn’t want to put it down* because I wanted to know what happened.
At the start, there is a family tree, but also a note from the author asking you to only look at it if you really have to because her aim is for the family and their relationships to unroll in their own time and for you to work it out for yourself. I mostly managed that, but I did have to have a few looks at the family tree when I was picking the book back up again after a few days break.
I haven’t read a lot of Rumer Godden’s books – and most of what I have read have been her children’s books. And as I said at the start, I still can’t work out what I thought. The ending isn’t as satisfying as I wanted it to be – even though all the ingredients seem to be there for it to work. I didn’t like a lot of the characters – or what they were doing – but I really liked Tracy and her story line. Even writing this hasn’t really helped me work out what I though of this and whether I liked it or not. I still don’t know if it’s going to go on to the bookshelf, or get lent to mum or sent straight to the charity shop. Puzzling.
Coming soon: Christmas reading recommendations. While you’re waiting, don’t forget the Christmas gift guides – Him, Her and Me are still here.
Happy Reading!
*but I did, because I had to go to work. And I didn’t like it *quite* enough to break my rules about not taking books that I have less than 100 pages left to read to work with me.**
** Because it’s a waste of bag space if it’s not going to last me all the way down and most of the way back.
This may be one of the least surprising BotW picks ever, considering that the first book in the Custard Protocol series was a BotW, as were several of Gail Carriger’s other books (Sumage Solution, Manners and Mutiny and Timeless) and she was one of my discoveries of the year back when this blog was but a child. In fact, the only question you have may be: What took me so long to read Imprudence, given that it came out in July last year. Fear not. There are answers ahead.
Firstly though, the plot: Rue and her crew are back in London after the events of Prudence, which have landed her in a whole heap of hot water with the powers that be. On top of this, her best friend keeps getting engaged to unsuitable military types and there’s something going on at home. Rue’s vampire father is angry, her werewolf father is not himself, and her mother is being even more difficult than usual. What is going on? Finding out will take the Spotted Custard and her crew to Egypt and beyond
Now, part of the reason this has taken so long for me to read is that it was all boxed up with the to-read pile at the back end of last year, but the reason it was still waiting to be read at that point was a line in the blurb: “her werewolf father is crazy”. Having read Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, I had a fair idea what was going on there, and I was worried about how it was going to resolve itself. I love and adore Rue’s Paw – Conall Maccon and although he has his stupid moments (to whit, his idiotic behaviour in Blameless) I was a bit worried about what might happen to him. And I had a few rocky moments early on in the book, which involved near tears and sniffling. But I got through it and I was ok. And that’s as much as I can say without it all being a big old spoiler. And while we’re talking about the Parasol Protectorate, I found myself wishing that I’d re-read Timeless before I read this, because a lot of the action is in Egypt and there’s a lot of references to the events of that book. It did all come back to me, but I think I would have been cooing with delight sooner if I’d done a reread first. And so of course now I need to go and do that reread to check if there were any references that I missed in Imprudence. There are old friends here – and some who are less friendly.
If I have a quibble, it’s that everything is wrapped up very quickly in the end – the main romantic through line and the adventure-quest one. I could have read another 50 pages of that resolving itself. But maybe that’s just me. And if you’re wondering what prompted me to read this now, it’s the fact that the latest novella that Carriger has written is set after this book, and I *really* want to read that and so needed to do things in order. Because I’m like that. And we all know that I’ll be pre-ordering the next in this series, Competence, just as soon as there’s a paperback preorder link. Because I’m like that too.
As always in posts like this, I’m going to remind you all that this is the second in this series, but really actually the seventh if you’re counting Parasol Protectorate (which as you may have guessed have a fair bit to do with this) and eleventh if you’re going chronologically and including the spin-off prequel Finishing School YA series. So don’t start with this one. If you’re impatience, go and read Prudence first, but really, what you want to do is start with Soulless and work your way through Alexia’s story before you come to Rue. And then do the Finishing school, because that is so much more fun once you start to work out who everyone is and how it all fits together. Just my two-penneth. They’re all available in Kindle and Kobo and Audible* and you should be able to order the paperbacks from any good bookshop. Like the Big Green Bookshop.
Happy Reading!
And for longtime readers: No, I still haven’t sorted out the size mismatch issue with my Parasol Protectorate books, I still don’t know the best way to shelve them, but at least I haven’t caved in and bought a second copy of Heartless! There’s still time…
*Although NB, the first audiobook pronounces Lord Akeldama’s name wrong. It’s Ak-el-dama not A-keel-duhma or however she says it. It’s fixed by book 2 and I can just about cope with it in book one, even if my brain does repeat it pronounced correctly after every time it’s used.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 